


surveillance

by wants2die



Category: Harrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut
Genre: Gen, another awful thing i wrote when i was small, i'm kind of proud of this one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-22
Updated: 2015-11-22
Packaged: 2018-05-02 21:56:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5265125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wants2die/pseuds/wants2die
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>BANG BANG CYMBAL CRASH, goes the inside of your head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	surveillance

**Author's Note:**

> this is something messy based off of harrison bergeron by kurt vonnegut because i wasn't the same after i read that story. i wrote this when i was eleven and i couldn't breathe because of that story. so here you go. here's some pain.

Something interesting had happened on the television, but I couldn’t remember what it was.

It was hard to think sometimes, with the noises in my ears. There were days when I barely heard them and days when I had to lay on the carpet unmoving because of the government-issued screams and screeches that were wreaking havoc on my mind.

Today was an in-between day. 

I think I was on the verge of remembering it - was there a man? He was tall, I think. Handsome. Not wearing handicaps. Dancing with a beautiful ballerina? Declaring, in a voice confident and compelling in a way I had never heard - why would I have, when everyone's voices were the same?- that he was the Emperor of this land, and that the rule of the Handicapper General was over. Then there were gunshots, and they sound worse in person than in my head. 

Then a fire alarm sounded in my ears and I forgot all of that. 

I could feel that there was something important hovering around the edges of my brain, but the noise had scattered it to the farthest reaches of my head. 

If I had forgotten it, it must not have been important.

But I couldn't shake the feeling that it was the most important thing I had ever forgotten - that I needed to remember or something terrible would happen.

Had something terrible already happened?

I slowly turned my attention back to the ballerinas dancing terribly - just as terribly as anyone else would - on the television, a faint tug of something still pulling on the edges of my mind. 

My head ached. 

It hadn’t stopped aching in a long time, not since I was a tiny little girl who didn’t understand why Mummy and Father were wearing those bags of heavy beads and those radios they clipped to their ears. 

Anytime I asked, they would tell me that they had to because the government said so. Because they were both smart and strong, and it wasn’t fair for them to be that way, not when there were people who weren’t smart and weren’t strong. The government didn’t like people who didn’t follow the rules. 

I had to always follow the rules, even when I didn’t like the rules, because I was a good little girl and Mummy would get cross anytime I complained about the headphones. 

Complaining was strictly forbidden in our household. 

Complaining was strictly forbidden by the government. 

Then it didn’t matter so much whether I whinged and whined and complained, because there was no one to listen to me. The only remnants of my Mummy and Father in our house were the splatters of red on the wall and the pictures of them the Handicappers had allowed me to keep. 

All I could think about, as I watched the ballerinas dance, was that stain on the floor behind them. 

Red. That was the name for the colour of the liquid that was slowly staining the concrete with its dark, muted tone. 

Cymbals crashed against my eardrums, but they weren’t so loud that I forgot entirely about the bloody - was that the right word? Blood seemed right for that strange liquid seeping into the floors behind there - stain behind the dancers. 

What had happened? 

Blood wasn’t a good thing, I knew that much. Blood meant pain and loss and death, and endless days spent alone in my room, my tears wet with cheeks and my stomach growling for food that wasn’t there. Why was everyone ignoring the blood on the floor behind the ballerinas? Was there someone who needed help?

Then I realised exactly what was wrong. 

Only seven dancers were moving along to the music. Hadn’t there used to be eight? I knew I could remember eight ballerinas swaying awkwardly to the music, but now only seven were standing. Where was the eighth? Did that - did the blood on the floor belong to the eighth ballerina? 

I felt like I could remember - something.

Blurry pictures formed in my head, of a woman who looked a great deal like the Handicapper General, the head of the United States Government, standing there with a gun. 

Didn’t I remember a gunshot once before? They sound worse in person than in my head. 

Diana Moon Glampers, holding a gun, a missing ballerina, and blood on the floor. 

It was like a connect-the-dots puzzle, except I knew the answer would be far more gruesome than the ones from my childhood, from before I had been handed the headphones and instructed never to take them out. 

Then I gasped, because finally, I remembered, the dots connected, and it was the most terrible thing I had ever remembered. 

Memories came pouring into my head, unwanted and unasked for.

A tall man, embracing a lovely woman, both without their handicaps, both lying on the floor with twin expressions of shock and horror marring their beautiful faces.

Blood pooling beneath their conjoined bodies. 

Both of them lying there, eyes open, but no life sparking within the colorful irises. Dead. 

Diana Moon Glampers blowing the smoke from the tip of her gun away, then ordering the musicians and ballerinas to start again in a beautiful, terrible voice. 

The musicians picking up their instruments again, the sounds of their instruments echoing around the massive chamber no longer the magnificent, beautiful noises that had resounded through the ears and hearts of all those listening, but instead cheap, and weary, as if they were resigned to their tasks. As if they had once had hope, but they couldn't afford to have it anymore, because there was no point in hope because it would always be taken away again. 

The ballerinas beginning to sway to the music once more, donning their masks and their bags of birdshot with heavy hearts. One of the seven ballerinas clipping an earpiece back into her ear. 

A twenty-one gun salute rang out heavily through my brain, and when it was done my gaze fell back upon the television and the seven ballerinas dancing there. Idly, I watched them sway to the music in the background - no better than how anyone else would have played it- ignoring the feeling of restlessness at the back of my mind.

There was something I’d forgotten, but what was it?


End file.
